Mary B

by Katherine J. Chen

  I busied myself with creating a new title page, and when I was finished, we stared for a long time at the mound of paper between us. The silence lengthened with our inner thoughts. I acknowledged I felt proud of the work, even if it should never grace the shelves of bookstores, and was about to begin imagining the lettering and binding which best suited it when I looked up. Darcy’s expression had grown somber, and with it, the atmosphere of the room had also shifted.

  “These last few days—this week—can’t have been easy for you,” he said.

  For a moment, I considered ascribing the source of my melancholy solely to Lydia’s death but decided against it. I touched the manuscript between us and distractedly folded a corner of the page. “I suppose you’d like for me to admit that you were right,” I said. “Well, you were. I should have kept my distance. I’ve been a complete fool.”

  “Not the first fool to have fallen in love where you shouldn’t have, I promise you,” he replied.

  “I…I do not know that it was love.” My face grew heavier, as it always did before the onset of tears. I frowned and fought them back. “I think now it was amazement…possibly astonishment at the idea of being admired by someone so unlike myself…of being admired at all. I felt, ‘This is my chance. I must take it. I shall prove everyone wrong.’ ” My outpouring surprised me, yet I continued: “It is very hard to live one’s life perpetually in waiting, and I cannot tell you how many men have passed through Longbourn to court one or other of my sisters, and how all of them never concerned themselves with me, though I sat in the same room and was as equally capable of speech or motion as Lizzy and Jane. My eagerness to be loved made me hasty. I felt encouraged to act boldly when I should have been guarded.” I lowered my gaze, unable to meet Darcy’s eye. I had perhaps confessed too much.

  “Such regret should be tempered in accordance with the worthiness of what has been lost,” Darcy said. “It gives me no pleasure to see you in pain.”

  “While I was in London, is it true you had words with the colonel?” I asked.

  Darcy stood and, turning away from me, began to straighten various objects on the desk. “Yes, we argued,” he replied. “He came to me one night in a highly agitated state just as I was preparing to go to bed. ‘If ever you were my friend, Darcy, you must help me now,’ he said, as soon as I opened the door. Then he told me everything—how he’d intended his acquaintance with you to be no more than a passing flirtation but that he’d let his feelings get the better of him and had fallen in love. I rebuked him for behaving so thoughtlessly. He begged me, practically on his knees, to help conceal this incident from his family, for by then he’d already proposed to Caroline Bingley, and she’d accepted him. They’d been acquainted, at that point, only four days.”

  I swallowed the growing lump in my throat—the bitter taste it left going down. “And what did you say?” I asked, not looking at him.

  “I said he’d made the right decision.”

  “What?”

  Seeing my stunned countenance, he continued: “I do not doubt that he was bound to you by honor. But there were, for me, at least three things to consider before I absolved him of his infamous behavior. First, there was the matter of his family. They’d intended, since his infancy, that he should make his fortune by marriage, being a younger-born son. If he’d persisted in marrying you, his parents would very probably have disinherited him, and then you would be poor and miserable for the rest of your life, drowning in his debt and living always beyond your means for the sake of keeping up appearances. I know it is a crude thing to acknowledge, but he needs Caroline Bingley’s twenty thousand pounds more than he needs her, God help him, and if he could have gotten the one without the other, I’m sure he’d be a much happier man than he is now.”

  Through my tears, I agreed that money was likely the prime motivator in the colonel’s attachment to Miss Bingley.

  Darcy went on: “My second consideration was that I didn’t judge him capable of loving you—not, at least, as one should before undertaking as great a responsibility as marriage. The colonel is a highly sociable man, friendly and indeed likable, but he is prone to fits of passion. His performance that evening in my study was unworthy and embarrassing, not at all the conduct of a gentleman. From his behavior, it was evident that you’d become an inconvenient liability for him, an obstacle barring his way to a more comfortable future.” Darcy stopped. For a while, there were no sounds but the pleasant crackling of the fire. Then he settled into a damask chair a few feet away from where I sat and, leaning against one arm, cupped his head in his right palm. He seemed to stare at nothing, lost in his own thoughts.

  “What was the third consideration?” I found myself asking.

  “What?” said the muffled voice from the chair.

  “You’d mentioned a third consideration before absolving him of his infamous behavior. What was it?”

  “Oh, that…” He trailed off, remaining in the chair. “That…had everything to do with my own feelings for you.”

  For what seemed an age, I sat dumbly listening to the continued pop-hiss of the fire. Then I became conscious that he was speaking again.

  “You’re not just a silly young girl who can be fobbed off in marriage,” I heard him say. “You’re full of ideas and thoughts and stories. When you’re sitting in front of me, reading your work, I sometimes wish I could get inside your head, to see what you see, feel what you feel. A man who would pledge his soul to the batting of a pretty eye or a witty retort is a fool, and these are the same men who have ignored you your whole life. They mistake the transient for eternity and find out too late their error. But to care for you is not just to care for a woman by the ordinary purchase of bonnets and trinkets or a second property in London—it is to care deeply, to understand you deeply, which is what you deserve.”

  I couldn’t bear to hear any more. A cold sweat had broken out across my forehead, and my hands shook.

  “Stop,” I said, and as though it were a blade, the word instantly divided us. “Stop,” I repeated, standing up from my chair, though he’d said nothing further.

  Darcy looked guiltily away.

  Even as I spoke, I couldn’t cease the shaking of my hands. “My sister…” I stammered, thinking of Lizzy. “You…you are married to her, and you swore an oath before God to honor and love her until death.” Such a confusion of emotions filled my mouth with unvented words, but there was no time to express them all. “I can’t understand any of this….” I continued weakly.

  “I acknowledge that the fault is mine,” he said, remaining seated. “Your sister is a charming and spirited woman. I was drawn to her for these traits, yet in the few months before we wed, I never seriously examined how suited we were to married life together. In her bright eyes and flushed cheeks, I imagined I’d met the only woman who could ever make me happy. But we are neither of us the person we hoped the other would be, and the illusion, wonderful as it might have been for the short period of time it lasted, has finally ended.”

  “Is that all?” I said accusingly, incensed at his resigned attitude. It seemed inconceivable that one as rational as Darcy could possess such poor judgment. And was it really possible to fall so easily out of love? “Will you then do nothing to heal the breach between yourself and Lizzy?”

  At this, Darcy stood. “The loss of our child was the final blow. I know Lizzy blames me, that she will never forgive me. Though she is still my wife in name, she will never again be the partner I’d hoped for. She has made that clear in more ways than one, and I am no fool.”

  “Then you must try harder.”

  When Darcy made no answer, I continued: “The strife which exists in your marriage has deceived you into believing that you have feelings for me. Though it is, of course, absurd, I will pretend to understand how you could jump to such a far-fetched conclusion.”

  While I’d been talking, he’d mo
ved closer. Our eyes met, and I whipped my head away so quickly the room spun. I gripped the edge of the desk to steady myself.

  “My feelings are real, and odd as it may seem to say so, I believe they are more true and good than whatever claims of affection the colonel might have made to you. Mary, can you honestly tell me that you feel nothing for me? That your happiness here derives only from Pemberley?”

  I felt his finger graze my cheek, and I jerked away.

  My reaction offended him; he slipped his hand into the pocket of his coat.

  At that moment, a new voice entered the room, and I jumped at the sight of Lizzy standing in the doorway.

  “Darcy, I have finally found you,” she declared, looking quite as she always did. Her face gave nothing away. “Will you come with me downstairs? There is something Mrs. Reynolds and I would ask you about.” She waited for him smilingly, glancing only once at the completed novel and ignoring the spot where I stood.

  Darcy’s eyes met mine a second time as he left. They seemed to search my face, and finding nothing within my features to encourage him, looked unseeingly away.

  I heard the door click shut and their footsteps recede in the hall. For several moments, I sat in stunned silence, attempting to make sense of what had happened. Either the world had gone mad or I had, I thought, for it must be one or the other. I tried, too, to make out my own feelings but couldn’t. I was both tired and animated, furious and astonished, mortified and flattered. It isn’t possible, I repeated to myself. This is the unhappy result of his grief. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. And yet…when I now reviewed the several instances of our interaction, the signs of his affection seemed so incontrovertible in light of this revelation that I reproved myself for not noticing them earlier. They had existed, in fact, even before the incident, and all seemed to fall into place: his resentment over the colonel’s attentions, his particular concern for my feelings, the energy he’d committed to Leonora. Was it possible that what I’d mistaken for friendship, even for a devoted paternalism, had actually been love?

  But what about Lizzy? Much as I still cared for her, the change which Darcy mentioned was certainly irrefutable, and perhaps the sister I had known at Longbourn was lost forever. Their marriage is over, a small voice said to me. Didn’t she say as much to you? You know the truth of their relations now. It is all for the sake of appearances that they are still together.

  A sudden exhaustion overtook my senses, and I rested one hand on the completed novel. The other drifted to the place where Darcy had touched my cheek. My fingers hovered there for a few moments before falling like a stone to my side.

  The next day boasted such fine weather that Lizzy suggested an outdoor excursion in the form of a picnic lunch. It was the colonel who led us to a spot not too far from the house, midway to the stables, that featured an immaculate view of the lake. In the past, we’d often sat there together, talking of nothing, every inane declaration punctuated with either a soft caress or a kiss. But I’d kept wary distance of that man since his betrayal, and we hadn’t exchanged a single word, which, fortunately for us both, required practically no effort, due to the verbosity of his new love. The less attention they paid to me the better, for it permitted me to ignore the sight of their cooing and the constant concern they showed for each other’s comfort. At present, the colonel was draping a light shawl around Miss Bingley’s bony shoulders and asking if he could pour her a drink.

  I felt my eyes would never stop rolling in their sockets.

  As to Darcy, he had walked a little behind the rest of us. I’d glanced back at him once, though his gaze had been too occupied by the fine beeches and oaks which lined our path to return my look. In his distraction, I sensed unhappiness, but there was little I could do to console him. I could still make nothing of my own feelings.

  We had been sitting for half an hour, filling our bellies with pigeon pie, ham, jam puffs, and ginger-beer when Lizzy announced she had a small entertainment for us.

  “Oh!” Mrs. Hurst cried happily. “That sounds delightful.”

  “Would you really like to know what it is?” Lizzy teased.

  “You know we are all dying to find out,” Miss Bingley chided.

  “Very well,” Lizzy replied, and she extracted from her reticule a folded sheet of paper.

  “Ah, a letter!” Miss Bingley said, and though she had eaten a good deal already, her face lit up with hunger.

  “Or a page from a journal,” Mrs. Hurst purred. “How delicious.”

  “The chambermaid’s diary,” Miss Bingley suggested, laughing.

  “Well, Lizzy,” the colonel said. “What is it?”

  “It is not a letter, and it is not a page stolen from a journal. It is an excerpt from a book—an as yet unpublished novel,” my sister answered calmly, as the blood drained from my face. I turned in panic to Darcy, who sat a little behind his wife. Though he frowned at the announcement, he did nothing to interfere.

  “I never read novels,” Miss Bingley said. “I find them excessively vulgar.”

  “Well, I shall read a very short excerpt, so as not to offend your sensibilities too much, Caroline, and then I will reveal all,” Lizzy said.

  “Lizzy…” I had just time to say, but she had already begun to read.

  “A shadowy figure emerged from behind the velvet curtains. Leonora, Queen of the Danes, rose from her seat in horror. ‘Who are you?’ she screamed. ‘What do you want?’ Then the figure stepped into the light, masked and terrifying to behold, for he wore a laughing demon’s face, complete with horns. Beneath a black cloak, gloved hands slowly unsheathed a brilliant dagger, the hilt of which was inlaid with bright rubies and emeralds. Leonora thought she recognized the blade. Then it came back to her—the dagger had been a gift from her own father, Albert the Good King, to the grand duke, her uncle. But her uncle was dead! She’d witnessed his execution with her own eyes! Was this his ghost come to drag her to hell with him?”

  “Well, is it?” Mrs. Hurst shouted in mock horror, as her sister and the colonel snickered.

  “Patience, Louisa,” Lizzy said, and she continued:

  “But it was not her uncle, for the voice that issued from behind the mask, though it was muffled, undoubtedly belonged to a woman. ‘I’ve come to take what’s mine—your life and your throne,’ the assassin said, coming menacingly towards her. ‘And to avenge the grand duke, whom you cruelly and unjustly put to death by the most disgraceful means possible. He is only one, however, of an army of those who stand behind me and who recognize my claim to Denmark.’ She had no time to finish her speech, for at that moment, Wilhelm burst into the throne room, having sensed that something had gone terribly wrong. ‘Leonora!’ he cried, running towards his queen with his sword. But the assassin proved too quick for him. The jeweled dagger plunged into Leonora’s stomach. Bleeding profusely, Leonora tore at the devil’s horned face with desperate fingers. The strength quickly left her arms, but the mask fell, too. And she came face-to-face with the one person she loved most in the world, her half sister, Agnes. ‘Traitor!’ she spoke with her dying breath.”

  Lizzy set the page aside and looked at me, her eyes sparkling with triumph. So, I thought to myself, staring at my hands, she knew. She’d heard enough in the library the previous evening to draw her own conclusions.

  “Absolute rubbish,” Miss Bingley said, flinging off her shawl. “Now, you mustn’t be offended by my reaction, Elizabeth. I warned you I disliked novels—and for how liberally they treat history, too. I’m quite sure Denmark never had such a queen named Leonora. Nor a king called Albert the Good!”

  The colonel’s face brightened. “Why, Miss Bingley,” he exclaimed. “That is exactly what I said the first time I heard of the work. How alike our minds are.”

  My stomach grumbled. I thought it very likely I would regurgitate all that I’d consumed in the last half hour, and if I did, I since
rely hoped the shower of my wrath would find their intended targets.

  “Then, do you mean to say you are familiar with the writing, awful as it is?” Miss Bingley inquired in disbelief.

  Darcy, who had up till then been silent, spoke: “Surely the point of fiction is to imagine new histories and characters. I can find nothing wrong with the liberties taken.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t, Darcy,” the colonel replied callously, “seeing how much you cared about the book’s completion.”

  For the briefest moment, the image of the grand duke’s bloody and torturously prolonged execution overlaid the idyllic scene of our picnic, and I grabbed a fistful of grass to keep from lunging at the two-timing villain.

  “Come, this is a fine way to treat my surprise!” Lizzy said from the head of the blanket.

  “Lizzy—” I repeated, struggling to contain my temper.

  “There’s more?” interrupted Mr. Hurst, who had hitherto been polishing off a chicken leg.

  “I will have you know the author sits among us,” Lizzy said mysteriously. Then she pointed at me. “There!”

  My face turned scarlet, as everyone stared. No one said anything.

  “I own that it is mine,” I said in a show of bravado, feeling dangerously close to tears. “It…it was a way to pass the time,” I added when the silence persisted, and I fixed my gaze on the constellation of crumbs on Mrs. Hurst’s plate. “One reads so many of the same books….” The thought vanished before I could complete it. My throat had closed.

  “How sweet of you, Elizabeth, to share your sister’s work with us,” Mrs. Hurst said awkwardly.

  “Just like I said, absolute rubbish,” I heard Caroline Bingley whisper into the colonel’s ear, and the latter laughed.